Armchair Analyst: All 24 MLS teams in review | Week 19 analysis https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019/07/14/armchair-analyst-all-24-mls-teams-review-week-19-analysis MLS Week 19 Review: Controversial call takes spotlight on chaotic weekend https://www.prosoccerusa.com/mls/ml...c-fc-controversial-call-throw-in-corner-kick/ Atlanta United fans getting their reality check now https://www.ajc.com/blog/further-re...eir-reality-check-now/12KzVx5ljLKMB0gTYNM8BJ/ No excuses anymore: It's damn the torpedoes for TFC https://torontosun.com/sports/socce...xcuses-anymore-its-damn-the-torpedoes-for-tfc Schultz: As team wobbles, United president Darren Eales defends two big offseason decisions https://theathletic.com/1078152/201...en-eales-defends-two-big-offseason-decisions/ Impact Badly In Need of Freshening Up https://www.mountroyalsoccer.com/2019/7/15/20694736/impact-badly-in-need-of-freshening-up Report: Red Bulls defender Aaron Long drawing transfer offers from abroad https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019...der-aaron-long-drawing-transfer-offers-abroad Minnesota United-branded futsal court replaces basketball at West 7th park https://www.twincities.com/2019/07/15/minnesota-united-futsal-west-7th-park/ St. Louis ownership group makes presentation to MLS expansion committee https://www.stltoday.com/sports/soc...cle_f6ebcb60-54e0-5bd0-bc62-05950042175f.html
Pour one out. Multiple league sources tell me veteran winger/defender Brek Shea tore his ACL against the Sounders. Awful news for Shea, who has played 19 games this season, starting 10.— Paul Tenorio (@PaulTenorio) July 15, 2019
Centennial 38's campaign to get a long time Italian Rapids fan to a game is getting some local press https://denver.cbslocal.com/2019/07/15/colorado-rapids-man-italy-campaign/
We're trying to get him the whole package, train to the airport in Italy, flight, hotel and transport in Denver. We've almost raised enough to cover the flight (the bare minimum) and if that's all we raise he'll crash with a supporter but we're trying to do more than that. If somehow we go over our goal for all of that the extra will go to the Oar Foundation (C38's charitable organization).
I feel sorry for Shea (obviously) but I think he’s emblematic of how bad Frank de Boer has been. I get it that Shea’s size and athleticism gets attention from coaches who always think they will be the one to tap into that. But de Boer took an exciting, ball on the ground, play through the middle blistering offense and turned it into a dull, cross it into the box team led by… Brek Shea? I mean, does game film exist of Atlanta the last two years and Shea the last ten? Maybe with him out, Frank will go back to plan A….
This is such a cool story. I wonder sometimes how popular MLS is in other parts of the world. Especially for viewers in Europe, Africa, and western Asia, many MLS games come on in the middle of the night. I seem to remember a thread several years ago that listed foreign broadcasters who had rights to air MLS games in their home countries. I think I'll check out the media section on BS to see if it's still around.
Looking at Twitter during the last two Rapids games, both having gone into lightning delays, you can see that three's a lot of gambling interest in MLS during the European offseason.
I've spent most of the time since MLS came into existence living overseas - mostly the Middle East, Central Asia, and South America. Based on my experience (and different people in different places can have different experiences) MLS followers are very few in number. (Leaving aside gamblers, which I will address in a moment) And I'm not sure the number is really increasing much. One example, for the 2011 and 2012 MLS seasons I had probably the best sports-focused satellite system in the Middle East. I saw the occasional MLS game on one of the Al Jazeera Sports channels (I had something like Al Jazeera Sports 1 through Al Jazeera Sports 10). Typically they were matches from a few days prior, and they were on at random, strange hours. (middle of the night one week, weekday morning the next week, not at all the third week). When I returned to the Middle East for the 2015-2017 seasons I had the same satellite system. MLS had moved to Abu Dhabi sports. This was when MLS made a pretty big deal about selling the international rights to someone. Anyway, I never saw a single MLS match on Abu Dhabi Sports, because they were exclusively relegated to Abu Dhabi Sports 7, 8, 9 and so on. Despite having dozens of sports channels (including many European ones), I only had Abu Dhabi Sports 1 and 2. I cannot imagine MLS' viewership increased in the Middle East as a result of this change. The bottom line, people need to consider context when talking about MLS being available in different countries. Yes I have had access to MLS while living in various countries. But in those cases I also had sporadic access to literally dozens of soccer leagues around the world, from the Ukrainian League, to the Kuwaiti League to the Malaysian League and so on. In this day and age having access to a league in a foreign country in and of itself does not mean much.
I used to be the "MLS guy" for a European-based sports betting advice site. The people who followed me were almost exclusively Europeans. Mostly Brits and Eastern Europeans. Yes there are people who bet on something just because it is about to start. Maybe things are a little different now, but at the time the vast majority of people who bet on MLS were not Americans. They were not even people who watched much, if any, MLS. I knew no more about MLS than the typical Bigsoccer poster at the time, but my readers truly knew nothing. I would just talk about things like international call ups and injuries, with Bigsoccer and the MLS website as my primary sources of info, and people were amazed I had so much knowledge and information about MLS.